Imprisoned In Feathers
by Impure Paradise
Summary: She was trapped in a birdcage, watching him unfold. (Darling!Pan. Ficlet.)


**Imprisoned In Feathers**

**Summary - She was trapped in a birdcage, watching him unfold. (Darling!Pan. Ficlet.)**

**Disclaimer - I do not own the characters or anything involved with the fandom whatsoever.**

**Thank you for dropping by to read. I hope you like it!**

**(AU-ish in some parts)**

* * *

**(Wendy)**

I had once felt like a Queen in this place that I had called home for so many years (so many that I had long lost count) because I'm special. I'm a _girl_. And I'm not _like_ the others. But now, now things were different, darker, Neverland was a place of terror, and I only felt like royalty when I managed to close my eyes and drift off to sleep where I dreamt of beautiful nightmares of a normal life with my family and with _love_ as opposed to _hate_. Neverland was once a place in which I felt beyond fortunate to reside in. I would savour every minute of breathing in the air, every footstep along every warm beach, every splash of every frozen waterfall against my skin, and I would crave the moment in which I awoke and did it all again - now, however, I craved sleep a lot more than sunrise. I didn't feel like a Queen anymore. I felt like a little wounded bird, just waiting to be shot between the eyes, strung up in a cage made of ropes and branches and shame and corrosion.

(_Wendybird_. He'd called me that, once or twice, with the most saccharine, toxic voice a boy could possess, like the name was just rolling right off of his tongue with more ease than he had ever felt before, like he'd been saying it over and over for his entire life and it was all that he could spew from his lips. God only knows how I could recall such a thing, so vividly, how just a simple moniker had been imprinted in my memory and embedded into my bones like I needed it to remember how to _breathe_.)

Pan - Pan, not Peter, because he didn't deserve to be on a first-name basis with me any longer - had always been something of a bastard. Back then, back when he was Peter - my sweet, _sweet_ Peter Pan - he thrived with the frivolity and levity of a child and he laughed - oh, how he _laughed_ - and he acted as though he was superior to whomever his eyes grazed, but in such a wonderful way. Not in a threatening way. Now? Now he stole and hurt people, and he _meant _it, meant it with every beat of his sour black heart. He had caused pain to anyone he saw fit of such demolition, even his own lost boys from time to time, physically, emotionally, and he did it all with a dastardly smile that gleamed with the glint of a butcher's knife. He wouldn't stop until everything and everyone was fragile, broken, and unable to be saved, just like himself.

I had long gotten used to the life that I had chosen (wished now that I hadn't taken the hand of Pan's shadow, wished that I had been _smarter _than that), I'd gotten used to the hopelessness and the darkness and the evil and the terrible, terrible, twisted taunts and smiles and nightmares and shadows. Neverland had become a part of me, and I knew that even if I was ever so lucky as to escape its clutches, I would never be the same. I would never be Wendy Darling again. I would always lie awake at night, look out of my window and to the dark, black sky, up at the swarms of stars - so beautiful and shiny and nothing like the clouds of Neverland - and I would be reminded that somewhere out there, off in Pan's land, something unspeakable was happening to someone who was not me. And I would not feel fortune at the notion of being _spared_. I would feel selfish. I would always remember what horrible things were so close yet so out of reach.

But there was something new in the air, something that held the promise of change, something that wasn't quite evil, something that could destroy the King with the barbaric grin. I could feel it all around, encompassing me, giving my heart warmth. Pan was nervous. It hid, imprisoned, inside of his eyes, but I saw it; like he was worried, scared (no, no, Pan never worried, Pan feared nothing. _Right?_). I held hope that maybe, just maybe, he might be foreseeing his own reckoning. Maybe he might be decimated where he stood and his reign would fall and we would all be _free_ (for the most part).

All I knew was that there was a boy, Pan was looking for a young boy. Felix had called him Henry. I remembered the name and I held it in my heart because this boy (this boy whom was only known to me by name and nothing more) was the only hope that I had left. I could only assume that this boy had something to do with why I had been tossed and locked up in a horrid cage, strung over one of the perishing trees that circled Pan's land, sliding from side to side only when a strong gust of wind approached. I found it quite amusing. I had always wished to learn to fly. I would have felt humiliated by the cage situation had I not been far too busy trying to figure out what Pan was up to with this little boy who seemed to be the basis of every conversation that Pan and Felix had. Pan never told me anything. I always had to find out for myself.

(Maybe it's because I'm not a boy like the others. Maybe it's because he doesn't _trust_ me.)

(And he shouldn't.)

God only knows what sort of power this Henry held over him. Pan wasn't looking for him with the simple objective of making him another one of his lost boys, that much was obvious, as he didn't make such a big deal about the lost boys. It was proof, proof that Henry was someone vital and dangerous to Pan. I just wished to know what Pan was planning to do to this boy in that twisted, terrible mind of his. He was planning something horrendous, him and Felix, I knew that much. Pan is _poison_. He destroys everything that he touches with his icy fingertips and he doesn't _care_ - doesn't care about any of his lost boys - doesn't care about _me_ - and he would always be poison; toxic and hazardous; until forever (because Pan _will be _immortal whether anyone likes it or not).

I thought a lot, contemplated, while watching Pan's reign unfold from outside the bars of my cage. I made a list in my head, a list of everything that I wanted (knowing full well that I'd never get any of them). I wanted my family back, my precious brothers, not in Neverland, not anywhere near Pan, just back, with me, somewhere else, far, far away from the boy in green. I wanted to get out of the cage, break free and leave unscathed and shoot a vindictive, complacent smile to Pan as I ran through the familiar forest with my unkempt hair and my marred skin and my befouled dress. I wanted to save the boy who Pan wished to steal away and ruin and destroy because he _could_, because he _always_ won. I wished, more than anything, to take Pan down myself, for everything that he has done; to curl my splayed, strong fingers through his blond hair and throw him to the mermaids, to feel him writhe at my feet and beg for the mercy that he showed no one, to feel his aching scream against the palm of my hand as I asphyxiated the life from his body. Some of those things were seemingly never going to happen, others were an impossibility, but I had always been something of an optimist, before Neverland and still as I stared at Pan and daydreamed all of my twisted fantasies, feeling my lips play with a smile.

(He had changed me, made me something that my parents would _run_ from, made my mind turn depraved, and yet I reveled in it, because he would be so proud to know what goes on inside my head, but he'll never know. He'll never know that his tricks worked. He'll never know that _Darling_ is gone. He'll never, never, _never_ know and that made me feel fan-bloody-tastic)

Of my list of wants and desires, the easiest of all appeared to be my wish to escape the cage, but I was at a loss. I had thoroughly examined every inch of the branches that kept me excluded from the forest that encircled me, and it seemed like there was no escape from the confinement, but that didn't stop me from trying. Didn't stop me from _believing_. Pan had always wanted me to believe in him. I didn't. How could I believe in a boy who had proved time and time again that there was no virtue left in the shell of his body? But I did believe in one thing; I would stop at nothing to get out of my cell (even if I had to claw at the branches of the cage until my fingernails broke and bled) and I would try my absolute best to get to Henry before Pan did (no blood would be spilled by him ever again, never ever again). I didn't care if all odds were against me. I was a believer, and he could _never_ make me lose that.

**xoxo**

My eyes, almond-shaped, once vivacious in colour and thriving with delirium at the concept that I would never grow old - and have to actually deal with things that would not concern a young child. Ironic, huh? - were peeking out from the bars of my cage and I was scanning my surroundings like a hawk might predetermine its next victim. The embers of the roaring, seemingly unending fire, were sparkling around the camp like little diamond meteors while some of the more out-spoken lost boys danced around the ardent flame as though the smoke made them delirious beyond return - one would assume that I would be familiar with each and every one of their names, by _now_, but there was so many of them, and new lost boys showed up more often that one would think, as though Pan was building an army - what is a King without an army? - and the dancing dragged on to the point where I was just waiting for their legs to snap and for them to all plummet to the ground like birds shot out of the sky. Around and around, the boys spun, did some chanting, because that was _normal_ here, and they made their silhouettes run up and down the trees that they passed. I was struck with a dizziness from just watching them.

When I laid eyes on the tree that stood directly opposite from my cage, a little towards the left, the biggest tree around, and at the logs that displayed before the trunk, I spotted Pan and Felix sat on said logs, watching the boys just as I had been, while still maintaining a conversation that was secret and silent to anyone's ears but their own. I wished that I could hear what they were saying - saying about the boy - _Henry _- but they were much too far away from earshot, and if I tried to move, even just an inch, they would know, know that I was trying to get closer to hear their words and I would be damned. Pan didn't like eavesdropping. I'd be lucky if I ever saw the light of morning again. Or maybe I'd be fortunate if I didn't.

(Dying would be an awfully big adventure, right?)

There was a wildness about the way that Pan's eyes were darting around the camp - almost purposely missing my lovely little cage and my own gaze glaring at him from behind the bars each time his eyes did their sweep of the perimeter - and it looked as though something about him, deep down - if Pan _had_ a _deep down _- was nervous. Again. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to show up? Henry? I wished I knew. I wished I knew a lot of things.

Pan was dressed in his usual green-clad clothing that made him look even more towering and boyish. I used to love the colour green. Not anymore. His compressed lips were moving slowly while he muttered responses to Felix, lips harbouring a holier-than-thou twist at one corner, a _devil's_-smile, something sinister and unholy and _wrong_. There was nothing good about his smile. Nothing good about a boy who could hurt others so effortlessly and shove a girl he once seemed to care for - like _Hell_ he ever truly cared for me - into a cage - silly birdcage - Wendybird - he loved his irony, that boy.

There was a small flicker of movement, and his eyes - so so green and cruel - nothing _human_ about them - landed onto mine, and it was almost as if he could read my mind. Hear all of the horrible things I wanted to happen to him because he was Pan and he deserved his reckoning. Hear my anguish at being trapped in a cage, most likely to take part of one of his silly little games because my life was his game now. I couldn't beat him at his own game.

The glimpse had started simply, just his eyes raking over mine, harmlessly, until I realised that it was no glimpse, that it wasn't ending as promptly as I had hoped. He watched me, his eyes swimming inside of my own as if he was in a trance of sorts, longer and longer, until I began to believe that he was playing another game with me - Pan loved his games - and he was waiting for me to look away first. Usually I would have just indulged him, let him win, but I was no longer in the mood to allow myself to be pushed over by him like a doll, not now that he had truly sent me over the edge by locking me in a cage of all things. I didn't back down, I refused to lose for his amusement. I held his gaze until all I could feel was an overwhelming sense of pride rushing throughout my veins and felt the harsh air burning in my lungs - begging me to stop playing and to _breathe _- because I wasn't quite respiring regularly and every puff of air I inhaled was Heaven to me.

As the seconds drew on, and his hypnotic orbs remained trapped against mine, his lips twisted against, into a smile that caused a twinge of something painful to pool in my stomach, made my heart pitter patter against the ribbed cage of my chest because it wasn't _fair_. He could have been _different_, he could have stayed true to all of the promises that once spewed from his lips like a psychedelic symphony of what our lives would be like in Neverland - euphoric - contented - free - King and Queen of a beautiful land filled with hope and promises of wonderous things - but, no, he was this..this _thing_..this wicked, vile thing, trapped in the shell of a handsome young man - so handsome that it wasn't _fair_.

I could remember a time in which I genuinely thought that Peter was not lost, that he could be _saved_. That maybe _I_ could save him. Maybe I could remind him of all of my favourite memories with him, in the beginning, and make him remember them too. Maybe I could bring my lips to his and make him see why growing up was natural and not something to be against. Maybe I could lure the good, sweet Peter out of Pan's body and reign and fix him back to the boy I once loved enough to give my whole life to his hands. But that, that was just an illusory fantasy brought on by the hope that was beginning to dizzy me and make my bones ache because hope was _nothing _if you've run out of options. As much as I wanted to believe it, as much as I dreamt that it were true, there was nothing _human_ left in Pan. Nothing worth saving anymore.

(I miss Peter with everything in me.)

(I ask myself, time and time again, what had happened to the boy who strived to be a happy little boy forever? But I hadn't received an answer yet. Didn't think I ever would.)

He had changed into someone I didn't want to look at anymore. He was malicious and bitter, he was powerful, so powerful that I could almost _taste_ it on his lips. And to think, _to think _that I had once allowed myself to fall so entirely in love with that boy, that I had adored him with _everything _I had. Neverland once sounded like a wonderful utopia, but it wasn't his land that had clinched the deal for me - it was him, Peter and his smile that dripped with sweetness and innocence and his warm embraces and his wit and his infectious laughter. _That_ Peter I loved. _That_ Peter I wanted for the rest of my life. That Peter was gone. There was nothing left of the boy with whom I once craved and burned for, and that hurt more than knowing I could never leave Neverland because he didn't will it, because he needed me for something. That hurt more than anything he could throw at me.

(He couldn't damage an already broken bird, after all.)

* * *

**Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope that you enjoyed it!**

**Review, please?**


End file.
